On dating, singleness and adjusting to being 30ish.

At the age of 39, I no longer have the luxury of chancing upon the “right guy” to have kids with, in his (or my) own time. I also don’t want to torture myself with the prospect, indefinitely longing for a child and constantly grieving, withdrawing, then re-launching into dating.

So I decided to approach the situation pragmatically. I created a checklist of “must haves” and dealbreakers. Each date now gets matched ruthlessly against the checklist, and ranked. No exceptions, no excuses, I wrote in my checklist. The only way to make sure I can find someone to have children with is to approach it as a numbers game, and refuse to compromise.

Here it is, in all of its relentless glory:

———-

What I want:

To find someone to have a kid with.

What that looks like:

Financially independent

Emotionally mature

Interested in having kids

Similar sense of humour

Totally taken with me (not just mildly interested/turned on).

Dealbreakers:

Doesn’t pay for meals

Doesn’t open doors

Constantly scanning for others

Constantly checking e-mail/texts

Emotionally unavailable

Physically unavailable

Annoying behaviour/mannerisms

Do not blind yourself to the dealbreakers. No excuses, no exceptions.

———-

It was working great on the obvious duds: those guys who weren’t ready to have kids yet. I was feeling safe, congratulating myself that it was getting me to move on more quickly and painlessly, protect myself from “falling” for anyone who was obviously not going to be good material to have kids with.

Except.

I just found the flaw in the system last night. My checklist doesn’t account for what happens when my date fulfills all of the conditions, and is for all accounts flawless. But my heart is a metronome when I’m around him.

It’s the perfect accompaniement to my pensive state. I just got off the phone after talking to Sparkling Eyes. I’d forgotten all about him until I ran across my post from 2009. And I was immediately transported to the magic of that evening; the way my breathing slowed when we spoke; the way that rare, deeply intimate space had been created that evening.

And then the discovery of his marriage and kids. And the devastation I felt, even as I’d lied in my blog entry, brushing off the blow as “just one of those things.” After that evening, I’d had words with Sparkling Eyes, accusing him of lying to me, and of being duplicitous. And he insisted he had not; that he and his wife were newly divorced, or separated–I can’t recall the specifics now–but the damage had been done, and I’d said too many unkind words.

Months later, when dating who would become my (now) ex-husband, I received a text, out of the blue, from Sparkling Eyes, saying that if I’d ever change my mind, to get in touch with him, and how sorry he was that things went sideways. It was phrased as though I’d spoken with him just the day before. And when I told him to move on with his life, he was confused; which resulted ultimately in a phone call clarification; he told me he’d sent that text six months prior, after our last phone call. Somehow it had gotten stuck in a queue and I’d only received it long after I’d given up hope, and moved on, ultimately marrying someone that I should never have married.

But one does what one does, and I moved on.

Revisiting my writing, I felt all the high and low of that evening as though it had just happened. And Sparkling Eyes’ full name came to me in a moment of quiet.

And so I contacted him at the last e-mail address I had for him, with the full expectation that my message would bounce back, stamped “unknown recipient”. And I’d breathe a sigh of relief, telling myself, “I guess it was not meant to be.”

Except that didn’t happen. And we ended up talking. And it ended up being amazing, as though those four years when we last spoke was just the day before. Towards the end of our conversation, there was a moment where we were silent; we remained quietly on the phone for a moment, smiling in wonder at each other.

And I just spoke with him again, and despite an awful family difficulty he’s having to deal with–or maybe because of it?–I feel deeply connected to this man in a way I have never felt connected to any stranger before.

I can’t explain it. And I want to linger in this wonder, and revel at its shimmer.

After a long hiatus during which I got married, then separated, I’m back to being single in a brand new city: Toronto.

I’ve made it a priority to focus on finding someone I could have a family with. My standards are higher, but the drama is the same: the same mix of unsure men; liars; emotionally or physically unavailable dudes; players. The difference in Toronto is that most people are forced to conform to the Canadian mould of “being nice.” It is an enforced space that makes it hard to distinguish the asshole from the genuine nice guy–an experience which I learned from the hard way recently after dating a seeming “nice guy” who turned out to be a lying jerk. Unlike in NYC, I couldn’t see this one coming at all, and am still shocked at how good he was at hiding his true nature.

Meanwhile, I’m starting to fall for Mercurial, who’s leaving for Russia in a week. And doesn’t know when he’ll be back.

What do you do when you meet your boyfriend’s friends for the first time, and you don’t like them?

It’s a situation I’ve often felt uncomfortable about: a negative opinion has tended to suggest that I have less in common with the person I’m thinking of dating than I initially imagined. Generally when I feel as though I probably would not have anything to say to a partner’s friends, it’s meant that I’ll eventually have nothing to say to my partner.

I met Camera Technician’s friends at a live music show a few weeks ago. We happened to be on a date, and they happened to be there. I wasn’t terribly impressed by the caliber of the interaction; it felt that they were interested in partying and having a drunken good time, and the level of conversation wasn’t particularly stimulating. I know, not everyone’s an academic — nor should I expect them to be. There are really some ways that working in this field has made me socially unsuitable for smalltalk and ordinary contact. My level of patience for superficiality has decreased rather substantially in relation to the amount of specialized knowledge I’ve accumulated. It’s an attitude that’s generally associated with elitism, an ascription I both loathe and yet, it’s also a position I am loathe to relinquish.

So when I met his friends, an ad director, a filmmaker, and a television producer, all of whom hold rather sparkling, intriguing jobs, I felt very ungenerous when I struggled to find some common ground. They didn’t want to talk shop outside of their work hours, and the cultural capital they had was of a more mainstream variety, which left me rather bored. And so we eyed each other warily, superficially, scanned each other quickly and surmised that we swam in very different oceans, and that we’d probably best give each other respectful, if nevertheless wide berth.

Last night, I had my first “we are a couple” dinner party at my boyfriend’s apartment. We’d invited over two of my current boyfriend’s friends, a couple who paint sets for movies and tv shows. We quickly found that we shared a knowledge and passion for organic gardening, so the evening went along pleasantly enough. But it was a strange space to be in, to be talking about mulch, compost and keeled potato slugs with interest and vigour long into the night. They smoked, I tried not to cough, and we smiled at each other.

Then we talked about bikes, riding, and the summer. The conversation was punctuated with questions about my stay in New York and my summer plans to be away. In the silence broken by the sounds of inhaling smoke, Camera Technician’s friends cast sidelong glances at him and at me, gauging our estimations of each other.

It’s funny. When you’re looking so hard for something, sometimes you don’t know what to do when you get it.

Things are going well with the Camera Technician. In fact, they’re going really well. So well that it’s freaking us both out a little bit. So well that everything is flying along at a breakneck pace and we’re suspending decision-making and rationality and living in an alternate universe where utopia is possible, unicorns are sighted with common-enough frequency that sightings aren’t worth comment, and where love and romance rule the day.

It’s that heady time at the start of a relationship.

And it’s also that time for the hard light of reality to shine, just a little, onto this utopia.

I had made summer plans before meeting this guy, so that I would be out of the country. Meeting him put a wrench in my plans and made me reconsider my options. Was there some way I could remain in New York? Should I forego my summer plans? Can I work around them somehow to include this guy? What are my options?

I started to look around for other opportunities in New York, and he did too. And we both realised that what was available was pretty slim and rather bleak. New York is an expensive and hard place to make a living, especially if you’ve just arrived. It’s not the kind of place that allows you to simply plug into some setting and hit the ground running. Eventhough there are expectations and pressures to do exactly that. Which is also what adds to the toughness of living in this city.

Meanwhile, back in utopia, CT offered me the chance to stay in his apartment, over the summer, as an option.

At first glance, it seemed like a great idea — here was the problem of space answered, I would sublet my apartment as I’d intended to anyway, and we could spend the summer getting to know each other. What could be more perfect?

But slowly the cold light of reality has started to creep in. I have a lot of catching up to do professionally and need to do some uninterrupted research — which I was planning to do this summer. I also had some plans to include some fun activities. And an expectation of feeling a little more grounded by being in familiar surroundings, amongst friends.

All of this means I’m probably going to go ahead with my summer plans and be out of the country after all. Which doesn’t bode well, necessarily, for a burgeoning relationship. Most relationships are rather fragile at the beginning. Adding stressors and qualifiers from the start tends to break a relationship, or handicap the necessary gentle space.

Once again, the chaos of my life gets in the way of sustaining a meaningful relationship. It would be tragic if it weren’t so banal, and so common. I can see it now, the next blockbuster Hollywood film titled, “The Tragedy of Timing.”

Well, it looks like I’ve started to date someone. He’s a camera technician who’s worked on a number of mainstream and arthouse movies. And I met him on e-Harmony, of all places. Perhaps it was elliptical harmony after all?

At this point, I’m not sure what’s happening between us; it’s all pretty new and barely a week old. So far what I can tell you is that we seem to be getting along really well. We have a lot of commonality in terms of our interests, and I find him quite compelling.

Which is a little odd, considering that my attention was completely on other people (The Poet, and the IT Guy). And that there are quite a few red flags that I have already encountered. When I met him, I was immediately put off by the fact that he is larger than he appeared in his photographs. Unlike that adage of the camera putting on pounds, this was quite the opposite. For a moment, I hesitated, considering turning around and pretending that I never saw him. But then he stood up and turned to face me. I smiled and stepped forward to shake his hand.

Date #2 included dinner, and, over dinner, a revelation that he was considering being a partner in a porno production. Yes. You read that right. That immediately made me think, “dealbreaker, of course.” I listened with a mix of curiosity and resignation, heard him tell me with embarrassment that this is not the kind of thing he generally does, and thought about what it might be like if I were in his position. I thought to myself, “well, at least he’s honest and forthcoming,” and appreciated the conversation for what it was. He told me more of the details of the production, and to be honest, it doesn’t sound as though it will proceed. There are too many roadblocks, not the least of which is the fact that the other principals seem more interested in living double lives, or carrying out some kind of fantasy, than in actually following through on a solid business plan. If this is his idea of getting rich quick (which seemed like his approach), I think he’s in for a few surprises. But he’s also no dummy. He pointed out these very issues and I could see that he was wrestling with the project on more than a few fronts, including the societal dilemma being in this kind of a position poses.

I’m not quite sure what compelled me to go on another date with him. It was entirely my suggestion that we go to Coney Island, and it was entirely a spur-of-the-moment decision. If it hadn’t been sunny that day; if I hadn’t been bored; if he hadn’t happened to pick up his phone; if he didn’t feel necessarily inclined, we would not have met. And we would not have embarked on this strange and curious relationship.

It’s uncharted territory for me. Once again.

And I’m still not sure how this will turn out. But I’m oddly not really worried. At this point I can take it or leave it. I know it won’t always be like this, but I also know that expecting disaster around every turn hasn’t helped me in the past: that approach has neither averted disaster, nor guaranteed happiness. Nor has the approach of embracing randomness and chance guaranteed or approximated any measure of reliable success, for that matter. But at least the latter approach has allowed for a more intriguing life: one that allows for possibilities and meaningful interactions.